Sunday, March 31, 2013

Eventually I'll get around to reorganizing and re-linking all the wedding photos. But for now, here are hilights! Since there was pretty much no budget for decor and the "stuff", and this all coincided with my MA exam, I quite literally used what I had laying around, as did the museum. The only professional touches were with the reception, which was in such a lovely garden on Rutgers' campus, I couldn't bring myself to distract from the view with anything too odd.

So, this was a seat-of-the-pants, throw-it-against-the-wall kind of affair that people are still raving about. My principal rule with regards to esthetics was "don't be nude", and my second rule was "relax and have fun". The third, unofficial was "get me another whiskey sour", which I find a helpful mantra to live by anyway.

Programs, aged with coffee and oven time. If I don't have to bake another damned piece of paper it'll be too soon. These were the "punkiest" of "steampunk" touches, since I printed them out from RU's student printers. All 50-odd of them. There was no way to get more sophisitcated with design, and it was just too delicious to me to stick it to the (IT) man and use uni services for things other than papers and research. The little fake ads were from the lovely HP Lovecraft historical society's freebie pages for prop stuff. Actually, that was a lot of help with the paper goods. I should have sent them an email or something of thanks.

It's a Victorian brick! This is Rutgers' Geology Museum, opened in the 19th century. Now, sadly, it's threatened due to merger fuckery. So it may not be a museum for much longer.

THE MASTODON. OMG. How cute is this? The museum wasn't any more prepared for decoration than I was, so they offered to use whatever chairs were there, plus whatever linens they used for dinners and fundraisers. And it was nearly free! Fuck the fascism of wedding standards, *I* got wed under a skeleton! Also, those are heirloom peonies in the vase, which was an awesome neo-Victorian touch.

After the food, the largest expense was clothing. And that wasn't much. Pendragon costumes did my corset and James' jacket. We ordered "blank" hats and went to town. I wore one of James' dress shirts, and family jewelry, and he used suit parts from the closet.

We had a memorial table, because being dead is no excuse to miss a wedding.

Instead of the unity candle, or other similar things, we smashed our own geode! People didn't know whether to "mazel tov" or not, but it's all good. I figured if they could survive no color scheme, no diamonds and frills, no sappy music (it was Bach, damnit), and readings from John Donne and Sagan, they may as well finish the ride and watch us hammer away at a rock.

THE MARRIAGE HAS BEGUN!

And now for the craftage, in case anyone wants to go accessory nerding:

Flowers are pretty but too expensive, but there's a lot of supplies available on Amazon Prime, so a fan it was! Besides, the Victorians loved them some fans, so I was more period than I intended.

I don't care if "gluing a gear on it and calling it steampunk" is gauche, but I liked these things.

One of the ladies' fans in progress.

That hat. Omg. This is the Wunderkammer Wedding Hat, a phrase which I chanted for about two weeks straight for the sheer silliness of it. I like wunderkammer, and being a crafter, I have stockpiles of interesting beads, shells, bones, etc., as well as meaningful mementos from my dead folks, so I went with it. I decided that I wouldn't try to make it make sense, that I'd just keep gluing "objet" to it until it couldn't hold anymore.

And finally, some pregame silliness. This was pretty much the tenor of the entire day.

Guests will mill around in my kitchen. It's the law.

My one moment of allowing people to treat me like a "bride". I decided to make fun of it.

Various Things

About Me

What else do you want from me? I'm overworked, underpaid, and too interested for my own good. There is little boundary between the professional, the creative, and the personal here. Enjoy the intersections :)